finding ancestors in the Dawes Roll

[flyingfysh]

I made some discoveries today. I have had reason to believe for some time that I have Choctaw ancestry, with my probable great-great-grandfather being on the Dawes Roll. But I have never found any official record of my great-grandfather anywhere, except on my grandmother's Social Security application. But nowhere else, until now.

I was looking over records of a court case from 1902 concerning my great-great-grandparents application to admit my great-great-grandmother to the tribe by intermarriage (she was white, but had been married 34 years at the time; the application was approved). There are several pages here, and in one of them I found a handwritten list of names which looked like it was probably the names of the kids - and there was my great-grandfather. I looked over the other records more closely, and found a typewritten version of the same list in the court records. And elsewhere, in a faded, hard-to-read handwritten section of the Dawes Roll, I found him again! So it appears that I have three ancestors on the Dawes Roll. The names were there all this time, and somehow I hadn't noticed.

I am trying to find any official record at all of my great-grandfather's kids (which would include my grandmother), but that may be much harder to find. His wife died, and he gave away the kids and disappeared.

[yellerpup]

1. If you can find your g-grandfather

with a list of his children (on a census or on the payroll for one of the several payments that were awarded to tribal members before the Dawes rolls started taking names) and the name of your grandmother or her elder brothers or sisters, and prove the lineage you could get in. This is very exciting news! I wish you the best!